By Shelia Huffman, The Lake Hoods Lady
Reputed to be Dallas' most sought-after speaker, Rose-Mary Rumbley, at age 80, maintains a schedule that might well crater a younger person.
She teaches drama at a West Dallas private school for underprivileged children, performs in the Dallas Senior Follies, shares her knowledge of Dallas landmarks and legends as a local tour guide, and she still makes time to speak at private parties for friends who want to make their event memorable. She also speaks at funerals.
Rose-Mary has authored six books. Four are on her native city of Dallas, one is on the history of the piano and one is a cook book, What! No Chili! Well, it’s really a book about Texas festivals. She will be the first to tell you that she doesn’t cook.
An accomplished actress, Rose-Mary appeared in the Dallas Summer Musicals and at Casa Manana.She was in the movie Paper Moon and in several TV productions. She has shared screen and stage with Tatum and Ryan O’Neal, John Davidson, Ginger Rogers, Van Johnson and Ruta Lee.
Born and raised in Dallas (“I’ve never lived anywhere else”), she was married for 56 years to the late Jack Rumbley, a percussionist with the Ft. Worth Symphony. Jack and Rose-Mary had two children and one grandchild.
Her knowledge of angels is captivating, and she says that she has a long history with them. At age three she took “expression,” as did many little girls of her era, so she was well prepared for her first school pageant. She played an angel.
In her talk about angels, Rose-Mary traces their evolution from Biblical days to our need for them today in our often-unsettled world.
God’s angels were messengers, guardians and healers, she says. In the Gospel of Luke, the angel, Gabriel, appears to the Virgin Mary and to Zechariah, foretelling the births of Jesus and John the Baptist.
Angels also played an important part in literature, she says. The English poet, John Milton, wrote about the Fallen Angel in Paradise Lost. Robert Browning was the first to associate angels with romantic love. He said he loved Elizabeth, (referring to the poet Elizabeth Barrett who later became his wife) like the angels love. “But angels don’t love,” Rose-Mary contends. They were messengers, guardians and healers.”
Great composers like Tchaikovsky and Handel brought us angels in The Nutcracker and in The Messiah, she noted.
And in the world of art, early angels were painted fully clothed, and they were always male, even though scripture describes them as sexless, as in lacking sexual characteristics. During the Italian Renaissance artists began depicting their images of angels as women and children. The wings became more stylized, the colors more vibrant; the nimbus became a "circle of glory" and the drapery flowed more freely, or was even absent in some cases. These are the images we picture when we imagine angels today.
Just why do we imagine angels today? “Because we live in a changing world with far less security than ever before, and we need angels in our life.” says Rose-Mary. “Our children need angels in their lives, too.”
Shelia Huffman is a columnist for BubbleLife. She may be reached at lakehoodslady@gmail.com.